Tag: Discontents
Olga Ravn’s Novel of Parenting and Its Discontents
Books & the Arts
/
April 2, 2024
Olga Ravn’s novel of parenting and its discontents.
In My Work, the novelist examines the trials and tribulations of being a mother.
In 1947, the English pediatrician Donald Winnicott listed the reasons why it might be natural for a mother to hate her baby. His intention was to challenge the inherited idea that mothers spontaneously take to their children and, in this way, ensure that
The Brilliant Discontents of Lou Reed
Culture
/
Books & the Arts
/
January 23, 2024
The brilliant discontents of Lou Reed.
A new biography examines the enigma of the musician.
To write about Lou Reed is to fight with Lou Reed. It is difficult to say, however, who started what, and there is more than a little evidence that the sourness of rock males and their broadsheets were a somewhat common
The Liberal Discontents of Francis Fukuyama
The end of the Cold War was supposed to usher in a better world. After four decades of struggle, the great battle between liberalism and Bolshevism had ended in the former’s decisive victory. Many in the West hoped that liberalism would now have free rein to shape events around the world. Utopia, at least of a liberal form, was finally within humanity’s grasp.
No essay embodied this feeling more than “The End
Afropessimism and Its Discontents | The Nation
Illustration by Tim Robinson.
Afropessimism is all the rage among millennial Black academics and activists—most notably among Black feminist critical race theorists, who themselves are now the prime targets of the MAGA crowd. Black intellectuals haven’t enjoyed this much pop currency among the right wing since Black Power took over buildings to demand Black studies in state universities and the Ivies 50 years ago.
Afropessimism’s recent emergence in the mainstream of Black political conversation could not have been better timed.
Adam Curtis’s Modern Discontents | The Nation
Like the slapstick routines of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges, Adam Curtis’s films revolve around a shtick. His métier is one of uncanny juxtapositions in sight and sound, united by droll narration and associative leaps—from topics as disparate as prescription drug abuse by America’s suburban housewives to the machinations of Saudi oil barons—to illustrate how they are all part of a larger scheme in the way the world is run. Curtis has developed this